Long Beach State University Athletics
Nele Barber, YiZhi Xue Earn Big West Weekly Awards
9/12/2016 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
Long Beach, Calif. - Coming off a busy weekend at the Pyramid, Long Beach State women's volleyball saw two players earn weekly honors from the Big West Conference. Senior outside hitter Nele Barber was named Big West Women's Volleyball Player of the Week for her strong play over the weekend, and freshman middle blocker YiZhi Xue picked up Defensive Player of the Week honors.
This is the fifth Player of the Week award for Barber at Long Beach State after she won the award four times as a junior. Xue, on the other hand, earns her first nod.
Barber was solid across the board for the Beach, averaging 4.39 kills, 2.94 digs and 1.06 blocks per set. She had at least 17 kills in every match, starting with a sweep of No. 25 LMU. Barber hit a sterling .567 in that match, taking 30 swings without committing an error. She continued her fine play into a five-set win over Duke, and nearly messed around and had a triple-double. Barber posted 19 kills, 14 digs and nine blocks in the win over the Blue Devils, including seven kills, six digs and three blocks in an impressive fourth set.
She closed out the weekend with two more strong matches on Saturday, putting up 20+ kills and 15+ digs in matches against Pepperdine and Arizona State. The Berlin native was just a dig shy of the second 20/20 match of her career, finishing with 22 kills and 19 digs against the Waves. For her final act, she hit .312 against the Sun Devils, posting match highs in kills (21), digs (16) and aces (3).
Xue did her damage defensively, helping the Beach showcase a much-improved block. LBSU outperformed its previous season high in all four of this weekend's matches, led by 20.5 blocks in the win over Duke. In that match, Xue had her career high with 11 roofs. Across all four matches, the 6-4 freshman from Nanjing, China had 29 blocks, while never registering fewer than five. She currently ranks second in the Big West averaging 1.26 blocks per set.
The Beach will be very active again this week, hosting No. 11 UCLA on Wednesday at 7 p.m. before a weekend tournament in San Diego against San Jose State, No. 10 San Diego and San Diego State.
